Keystone School

News & Events

2016 News Archive

Writing News-April 2016

Senior Katie Mansfield had “Telephone” published in the latest edition of English in Texas, the nationally recognized journal of the Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. As one of last year’s National Council of Teachers Writing Achievement Award recipients, Katie was invited to submit her poem.

Eighth grader Stephanie Rao earned a silver key for her poem “Death by Poetry” in the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards while six students earned Southwest Region-at-Large Scholastic awards. Those earning gold keys had their pieces submitted to the national competition. The region received 1500 entries and awarded twenty-three gold keys; Keystone students earned seven. Five of the thirteen students in the region earning gold keys attend Keystone. According to Brian’s calculations, this means that “1.5% of submissions received gold keys and that Keystone kids received 30% of those, and Keystone kids made up over 50% of the students who received gold keys . . .”

Eighth Grader Stephanie Rao: two gold keys for her poems “Death by Poetry” and “The World beyond the Sky,” a silver key for her short story “Regrets,” and an honorable mention for her poem “Picture Frame”

Freshman Daniel Covert: a gold key for the short story “A Sheep among the Wolves”

Freshman Julia Mansfield: an honorable mention for the short story “Fresh Snow” and a gold key for the personal essay “The Temporary Tube”

Sophomore Liv Kane: a gold key for the short story “Cultured,” a silver key for the short story “Plants,” and an honorable mention for the poem “Another Sailor Song”

Senior Katie Mansfield: two gold keys for her writing portfolio “What It Means to Watch” and her poem “After McKinney”

Senior Sam Terry: two silver keys for his poems “Sonnet for Fallen Angel” and “Board Game on the Beach”

Keystone middle schoolers garnered four of six awards in the 6-8 division of the Dana Kay Barber Writing Awards, a statewide contest sponsored by Abydos Learning and open to students whose teachers have participated in a summer writing institute. Students were recognized in a ceremony at this year’s conference in Houston last weekend.

Seventh grader Tatum Spriester: first place for her poem “Smoke and Perfume”

Eighth grader Anya Hansen: second place for her poem “The Bison”

Eighth grader Olivia Edwards: first place for her prose piece “Greetings and Salutations”

Seventh grader Megan Riebe: third place for her prose piece “The Snow Day”

Six Keystone eighth graders were finalists in the Better Business Bureau’s Laws of Life Essay Contest. Students were recognized in a ceremony in the theater on March 30. The BBB Education Foundation selected eleven finalists from a pool of 173 submissions. Student essays are on display in the foyer of Founders’ Hall. Please stop by and read them.

Sophia Rios: first place award of $200 and a diamond necklace for her essay “Perseverance”

Anya Hansen: third place award of $75 for her essay “Flat Stanley and the Sad Day”

Seven middle and upper school students will have fourteen poems published in the 2016 Young Pegasus Anthology. For more than eighty years, the San Antonio Public Library has celebrated the talents of student writers with the Young Pegasus Poetry Competition. Entries are reviewed by a panel of independent judges. Rather than choosing a set number of winners, judges look for poems worthy of publication. This year, the judges selected fifty-seven of the nearly two thousand submissions. Recognized poets will receive a certificate and copy of the anthology at the May 1 awards ceremony. Selected poems are read aloud during the ceremony, either by the poets themselves or by a member of the judging panel.

Keystone's qualifiers for the Texas Science and Engineering Fair competed at the convention center downtown against the best projects from around Texas. Please congratulate all of the students on their accomplishments and work. Below is a list of the participants and also those who won awards. Note: This year only 1st through 3rd place awards were given.

(Given to Juniors and Seniors who receive 1st or 2nd team honors and have a GPA of 90 or above)

Katie Mansfield

Nabil Kapasi

Olivia Addington

Poetry Out Loud - February 29, 2016

Congratulations to Sam Terry, Runner-Up in the Texas State Finals of the Poetry Out Loud Recitation Competition!

Along with twenty-six other school winners, Sam recited from memory two poems at the Bullock Texas State History Museum. After two moving performances, first of George Herbert's "The Pulley" and then Marianne Moore's "A Graveyard," Sam was invited to participate in the final round, for which he recited Thomas Lux's "Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy." Performances were judged across five categories: accuracy, dramatic appropriateness, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, and evidence of understanding.

The second place victory brings Sam 100 dollars and Keystone 200 dollars for the purchase of poetry books. Student interest in Poetry Out Loud has grown over the years, and I hope that Keystone continues to participate in the event.

Four teams from Keystone competed in the regional Science Bowl competition. The sophomore team of Evan Meade, Adithya Mummidi, Ashlyn Roth, Luke Vilagi, and Nia Clements came in 5th place in the High School division, and the 8th grade team of Beril Saygin, Isabella Sullivan, Abby Parker, Isabel Oxford, and Victoria Nelson came in 3rd place. The other two teams were Junior team Isuru Somawardana, Javier Soza, Carl Hileman, Mason Valicek, Claire Yager, and Sophomore team Jared Zhao, John Wilkins, Max Rattray, Daniel Tan, and Sam Delmer.

Academic World Quest

Keystone students represented Keystone School magnificently at the Regional Academic World Quest Competition on February 2.

Our senior team of Chris Zhu, Katie Mansfield, Emily Ye, and Nabil Kapasi won first place for the third consecutive year. They will once again represent us in Washington, D.C. in April in their quest to win the elusive national title.

Our junior team of Mishel Malik, Tamar Furman, Anna Christoffersen, and Isuru Somawardana won second place for the second year in a row.

Our new freshman team of Julia Mansfield, Daniel Covert, Jackson Covert, and Evan Berkowitch earned a fourth place finish in the field of forty-four total teams.

As testimony to the exceptional academic and personal quality of our students, as well as to the outstanding faculty and staff who have guided them in honing their analytic skills, Keystone School teams have now won the Regional Academic World Quest Competition for six consecutive years, and have placed in the top four teams numerous times. Such consistent success is an amazing record for any competitive team endeavor.

Congratulations to these remarkable students, as well as their faculty sponsor, Ray Boryczka.

Junior Academy of Sciences-January 2016

Eight students competed in the Alamo Junior Academy of Science competition. Please congratulate them on their success and hard work. Below are the results:

High School

3rd Grand Fair I – Isuru Somawardana

3rd Grand Fair II – Glori Das

3rd Grand Fair III – Ashlyn Roth

5th Grand Fair II – Nia Clements

Best in Category (Math&Computer Science) – Evan Meade

3rd Place Engineering – Paras Patel

3rd Place Engineering – Luke Vilagi

Middle School

3rd Grand Fair II – Beril Saygin

8th Grade Poets Honored

Eight middle school poets will have excerpts of their work on display at Culture Commons, 115 Plaza de Armas, through Feb. 28, as part of Poet Laureate Laurie Ann Guerrero’s call for “Love Poems to San Antonio.” Along with other poets from throughout the city, the students will be honored this Thursday, Feb. 4, at a reception sponsored by the San Antonio Department for Culture and Creative Development. Their poems are also posted in North Hall.

Honored Poets:

Iris Rodriguez, “Ode to San Antonio”

Siona Manocha, “The Five Senses of San Antonio”

Kimberly MacDonald, “Mi Ciudad”

Victoria Nelson, “My Home”

Beril Saygin, “My Goodnight Kiss”

Erica Stocker, “For San Antonio”

Ingrid Mayer, “Oh, San Antonio”

Sophia Rios, “Te Amo, San Antonio”

Texas Junior Science and Humanities Symposium-January 2016

Three or our sophomores, Nia Clements, John Wilkins, and Adithya Mummidi, presented their science projects up at the Texas Junior Science and Humanities Symposium in College Station. The competition allows for only 64 competitors from around the state and just to be asked to present is an honor. The judges advanced Nia as the top Medicine & Health/Behavioral project to compete on Saturday morning with 7 other finalists. Nia came away with 4th place in the finals and received an all-expense paid trip to attend the national symposium in April. Congratulations to all of these students!

Geography Bee

Congratulations to sixth grader, Gabe Lynch, who won the school geography bee. Erica Stocker, an eighth grader was the first runner up. Gabe will go on to take an exam to qualify for the state exam. If he wins at state, he will compete nationally.

Spelling Bee

Eight grader Erica Stocker is the Keystone Spelling Bee winner! In a Spelling Bee first, we had 3 sets of sisters competing. Erica and her sister, Corinne, were the top two spellers. Erica won correctly spelling “estuary” and “garrulous.” Erica will represent Keystone at the San Antonio Express-News Spelling Bee on Feb. 20th.

National Merit Announcement

Congratulations to the following students!

National Merit Semifinalists (8 out of 31):

Steven Broll

Augie Clements

Katie Mansfield

Ellery Pickens

Regan Schuetze

Vinodh Srikanth

Emily Ye

Chris Zhu

National Merit Commended Students (9 out of 31):

Madison Carolin

Dave Gravely

Yugena Gunawardena

Mohan Iyengar

Nabil Kapasi

Omar Khan

Carrington Kirstein

Will Poneck

Sam Terry

Semifinalists scored in the top 1% of seniors in the state of Texas, based on their junior year PSAT score. Commended Students “placed among the top five percent of more than 1.5 million students” who took the PSAT in their junior year.

ISEF

Keystone students Isuru Somawardana (10th) and Adithya Mummidi (9th), traveled to Pittsburgh for the annual International Science and Engineering Fair. As always our students represented us wonderfully. More than 2,000 high school students from 70 different countries participated this year. Isuru came away with a 4th grand prize in the category of COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AND BIOINFORMATICS. Please congratulate both of them!

Academic World Quest

Keystone's Academic World Quest Team once again won second place in the world in the Washington, D.C. competition. This is the fourth consecutive time Keystone has taken the second place trophy home! Congratulations to Emily Ye, Katie Mansfield, Chris Zhu, and Nabil Kapasi. Each student was awarded a $1,000 scholarship towards the CIEE Summer Study Abroad Program.